Bath

The last trip AIFS planned for us Southern California students was a trip to the town of Bath.

Bath is over a two hour bus ride outside of London.

Bath is famous for its ancient Roman baths.  The Romans discovered a hot spring under the city, and quickly built a bathhouse around it.  Thousands of years later, the Georgians were using these hot springs, not realizing that the ruins of a much older bathhouse lay dozens of feet below them.

Now the baths have been extensively excavated, and are available to view.

We made a brief stop to see the Royal Crescent.  Apparently Johnny Depp owns one of these.

The it was onwards to the bathhouses.  It rained the entire time we were in Bath.  Foolishly, we left our umbrellas on the bus.

Thankfully, the bathhouses are mostly indoors, so we weren’t too bothered by it for the first hour or so of our tour.

Our guide warned us that we weren’t allowed to touch the water, but urged us to do it anyway, quickly and quietly, without getting caught.

We snapped many pictures by the water.

When I knelt down and touched it,  I immediately wanted to dive it.  It seemed to be the perfect temperature.

We explored the ruins and excavation sites

The water was so warm! The air was humid and the buildings had that wonderful wet, musty smell.  Love it.

And at the end of the tour, we had the opportunity to try a class of the spring water.  Hundreds of years ago, they believed that this water had all kind of healing properties, so people flocked from all over to get a taste.

The waitress got a glass, and filled it up from a fountain behind her (in the picture).  The water was warm (as it came from the hot spring) so that was a little strange.  Once you got a big enough sip though, it became apparent how metallic the water tasted.  There are large amounts of iron in the water and this became fairly obvious the more I drank.  I was suffering from a cold at the time, so I drank almost the whole glass, figuring I should try whatever it takes to feel better.

There was also a random lion...but I like lions, and it was super cute.

We were starving, and it was pouring, so we ran into one of the first places we saw and got pizzas.

We then wandered outside, but thanks to the pouring rain, we mostly hid out in various shops to try and stay dry.

Erika wanted to buy something at a shop we passed, so she left while Ryan and I agreed to meet her at a shop near our bus, closer to our pick-up time.

It stopped raining by the time we were heading back to the bus, so we got pretty distracted taking pictures.

We even peeked into the Bath Cathedral.

The doors were so pretty

The Cathedral, for some reason, had these creepy exorcist angels on the outside

We saw a cute pig, which I know are all over Bath.

And this fountain was super cool and said "Water is Best"

Before we knew it, we were past the meet up time and worried about our bus leaving us. We ran to the bus and got on right as they were getting ready to leave.